


I Say A Little Prayer For You

by Hideous_Sun_Demon



Category: The Martian - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Excessive Catholicism, Gen, Grieving, Humour, Hurt/Comfort, Rick and Mark bff representation, a little bit of trauma, as a treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:35:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26812996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hideous_Sun_Demon/pseuds/Hideous_Sun_Demon
Summary: Five times Rick has sent up a prayer for Mark.
Relationships: Mark Watney & Rick Martinez
Comments: 12
Kudos: 65





	I Say A Little Prayer For You

**Author's Note:**

> I am frankly offended by the lack of content for the Watney and Martinez canon bromance we all deserve, so guess what? I’m fixing it myself

i **.**

It’s on a crisp September Sunday, on a stroll through the park with his wife and son, that Rick gets the call that he’s been selected for the Ares IV mission.

His initial reaction is, well—

“Yes! Fuck yes! FUCK! YES!”

He fists pumps so violently that a flock of pigeons they’re passing by startles into flight. Two year old Daniel, strapped into his stroller, copies his father’s actions with his own chubby little arm. “Fuck-ess!” he cheers, and Marissa glares daggers at Rick the whole way home, but he can’t say he regrets it.

His second thought, though, is: _oh god, who the hell are they sending me up with?_

Months of training have left him pretty well-acquainted with the rest of his astronaut class, and honestly, he could’ve done without it for a few of them. He’d rather not spend a year trapped in space with Phillips. He isn’t too keen on Menendez either, but he can’t imagine anyone selecting her; if he’s honest, he isn’t sure how she made it this far. And Tolsey — oh god, please, anyone but Tolsey.

This is what he’s thinking about as he makes his way to the conference where he’ll meet the other lucky members of his soon-to-be crew. It’s pretty much consuming his thoughts, actually, because if he seriously has to spend twelve months eating the unholiness they call space food and grappling with zero-gravity pooping with Jackson Tolsey of all people he’s truly going to —

He steps through the door, and his initial reaction is to sigh in relief, because Jackson Tolsey is nowhere to be seen.

“Hey there, Martinez! Glad to see you didn’t get lost on the way.”

Mark Watney is grinning and waving from the other side of the room. He’s this dorky little botanist guy Rick had met when they’d both made it through the rigorous rounds of NASA astronaut candidacy. He’s easygoing, and patient, and easily one of the smartest people Rick has ever met; plus, he can take a joke as well as anyone else in the program — and shoot one back far better. Rick can’t think of a more ideal outcome.

He snorts. “Must have, since there’s no way this is the right room. They’re not gonna let you anywhere near Mars.”

His first thought now is simple; a quick thumbs up to the big guy upstairs. _Oh thank god._

**ii.**

Rick’s not the kind of guy to panic under pressure.

He can’t afford to be. He’d have lasted a day in the Air Force if he was, and all of that was gravy compared to this, now: space. Strapped in at the helm of the ascent rocket set to take them up to the Hermes, Rick listens to Houston Control over the Comms, hands moving deftly across levers and switches to prime them for takeoff. The countdown booms in his ears, reverberating around his skull, and Rick says a prayer.

He doesn’t pray for himself; he doesn’t need to. Not to up-sell himself too much — aww, who’s he kidding, he’s earned it — but he’s a damn good pilot and he knows it. Aside from acts of God or shitty NASA engineers, nothing is stopping them from reaching orbit today. So Rick prays for everyone at home; his wife, his little boy, for the year they’ll be spending without him by their side. And he prays for the crew. Somehow, all their sorry asses are going to have to survive this mission, assuming they don’t kill each other in the meantime. It’s only then, thinking about all the lives held in the palm of this mission, that Rick feels the first kernel of fear.

To his right, Vogel, Johanneson, and Beck are staring straight ahead, faces swallowed by their helmets. To his right, Commander Lewis is doing the same — but Mark’s head is turned instead, and he’s looking at him. Through the glass of his helmet, he’s beaming at him. He mouths something — _let’s do this_ , it looks like, and he doesn’t look the slightest bit afraid.

“Takeoff,” Houston says, and Rick is calmer than he has ever been.

**iii.**

They abandon the mission, and the MAV ascent is the most silent they’ve ever been.

What really gets Rick, once they’re back on the Hermes, once the course has been set back to Earth with the ship one passenger lighter — what really gets him is the quiet. Rick had always hated the quiet, but Mark even more so. Always humming under his breath until Beck threatens him with the first ever outer-space-cordectomy or some shit. Debating the intricacies of nerd culture with Johanneson. Trying his damndest to get Vogel to crack that German stoicism and laugh; he and Rick have a running competition to see who can get the most chuckles out of him. Right now Rick’s winning, and—

Well, he supposes that isn’t gonna change, is it?

Mark hates the quiet, _hated_ the quiet — and the biggest bastard of a fact in all of this is that now he’s in pretty much the quietest place in the universe. He’s lying down there in a desolate wasteland, all alone without anyone even just to be with him, and _they’re the ones who left him there._

Thinking about it like that is almost blinding in it’s white-hot pain inside his skull; Rick has to sit down. He’s in Mark’s room, on his bed. He needs to be here, in the place where his friend had breathed and slept and messily folded his clothes. Everybody’s gone their separate ways tonight; tomorrow, Rick can try talking to them again, learning how to fill the silence without Mark as his steady second in rapport with a retort ready before he’s even finished his sentence — he can do that tomorrow, but tonight there’s only one quiet space he can bear to fill.

Rick thinks about Mark’s soul, a bright spot in all that darkness. He prays for him to have a swift journey. He prays that he not be afraid, wherever he is, and that he’s already at peace and looking down at them. He prays that Mark will forgive them. His clasped hands press into his forehead as he speaks fervent whispers — “Padre nuestro, que estás en lo cielos” — and if his sleeves brushing his cheeks get a little wet, well, that’s his business.

Rick lays back, the ceiling above him warped and blurry. He swipes at his face.

_Aww, Martinez, got a lil something in your eye there?_

“Don’t laugh at me, you fucker,” he whispers, and begins to learn how to take the silence in return.

**iv.**

When Rick finds out Mark is alive, he laughs until he nearly throws up, and then he has to stop himself from punching a wall, so that pretty much sums up his rock solid mental state. At the end of it, though, he can’t stop smiling, and that’s the main thing in his mind, because his friend is alive.

He sees the apprehension pulling Commander Lewis’ face taut. Rick’s pretty sure she’s taking the news harder than when they thought Mark had died, which in his personal opinion is completely deranged, but whatever. She can be as hard on herself as she likes; once they’ve got Mark back none of that will matter, and he can talk some sense into her with that smart mouth of his.

“Geez, Commander, have a little faith,” Rick says, and Lewis doesn’t smile back.

It’s only when he catches her poring over a report from Beck about Mark’s estimated rate of malnutrition — “She makes me write one up every week,” Beck admits to him later — that Rick truly lets himself understand that there are possibilities worse than a quick death.

He can’t let himself accept that though. Everyone has their own coping mechanisms for being stuck in a floating tin can while their friend is trapped on a planet trying to kill him, he figures, and his is to keep believing. If he doesn’t, he knows, he’ll go honest to god crazy.

It’s weird, paradoxical maybe, but the only time that faith falters, just a little, is in those moments right before Mark is supposed to check in with an update. He’s usually a minute late, the lazy bastard, and each second without a message is one that has Rick’s heart threatening to crack through his ribs. One second, and maybe the rover flipped. Ten seconds, and maybe there was another storm. Thirty seconds, and maybe he blew up the Hab. Again.

Rick hadn’t wanted to make a habit of praying for Mark on every one of these long days. He wants so badly to believe that his faith in his friend is all that he needs, that a higher power can sit this one out, because Mark’s got this, man! In those one minute purgatories, though, he makes an exception.

_Dear Lord, let him go just one day without something going wrong, please._

SORRY!!! POTATO HARVESTING TOOK LONGER THAN EXPECTED. ALL FARMERS NEED MEDALS SRSLY

_Just give him a little more time, alright? That’s all it’ll take._

WE HAVE ACTUAL SCIENCE TO DO WHILE YOU’RE PLAYING WITH PLANTS WATNEY

_He needs your strength now. We all do._

PLAYING WITH UR HANDSTICK ISN’T ACTUALLY SCIENCE MARTINEZ (I KNOW IT’S U)

_Please, if you’ll never give me anything else, give me this._

THIS IS WHY WE LEFT YOU ON MARS

_Amen. Amen. Amen._

**v.**

Mark makes it a full five minutes on his feet back on the Hermes until Beck, in full McCoy mode, forces him into an infirmary bed; which Rick still considers a pretty impressive feat.

He’d felt all the jut of knobbly spine and arch of ribs under his palm when he’d helped frogmarch Mark to the sick bay, but whether it was Mark’s stream of hysterical chatter — constant, still, somehow — or the fog of euphoria engulfing the whole crew playing tricks on his mind, but it’s not until Mark is laid out on the white sheets that Rick sees how small he looks. He looks like a paper cutout of himself, thin and crumpled and like he could be punched through with one hit.

None of that stops him from being the worst goddamn patient in the universe though. Beck is taking a well deserved break from Botanist-Babysitting, so it’s Rick who has to push Mark’s squirmy ass back against the pillows after he tries to sit up for the fifth time. Rick can feel his heart hammering against his rib cage; for a second he worries that it’s strong enough to snap those fragile little bones right in half.

“Don’t think I won’t pick you up and dump you back in this bed,” Rick warns. Mark grins up at him, and his teeth flash yellow and grimy.

“Says the guy who could barely deadlift more than Johanneson,” he says, because apparently even after eighteen months in hell, there are still some things Mark will never let go.

“I think I can manage. You’ve slimmed down so much you might actually fit into your prom dress.”

“Damn right.” Mark’s smile is a little more forced this time, and his eyelids are already drooping. He drops against the mattress without complaint. His battery had finally run out. Rick kicks his feet back and settles in as Mark drifts off into sleep; nobody has asked him to stay, but technically nobody has asked him to be anywhere else either, and Rick knows where his priorities are right now.

Mark’s breathing isn’t easy or peaceful or any other cliche — Beck confirmed three broken ribs, and those are only the injuries from the launch. He doesn’t look untroubled. But he’s here, stinking up the joint, and Rick considers that a favour fulfilled. “Thank you,” he whispers up at the ceiling. Then, as he hears Mark’s breath catch and shudder, he adds: “but we ain’t done yet, comprende?”

That startles a murmur out of Mark, and Rick sees his friend’s eyes flutter open again. They’re not bright with unrestrained joy, clear and teasing and so happy to be alive, like they were before. Now they’re glittering with something else.

Mark turns his head just slightly, searching the pillow and the room beyond like he’s testing the boundaries of reality; _is this real? Am I here_? His gaze settles on Rick, and the fear in them eases a fraction.

“Rick?” he whispers.

“Right here, buddy,” Rick says back. Mark’s fingers are flexing against the sheets, testing the soft fabric, and it doesn’t take much for Rick to lay his hand over them. Mark doesn’t say anything else, and neither does Rick, and everything’s not okay, exactly, but it’s a start. Rick has faith in that.


End file.
